Part 1 (1/2)
LONGARM AND THE APACHE PLUNDER.
By Tabor Evans.
DON'T MISS THESE ALL-ACTION WESTERN SERIES FROM THE BERKLEY PUBLIs.h.i.+NG.
GROUP.
THE GUNSMITH by J.R. Roberts
Clint Adams was a legend among lawmen, outlaws, and ladies. They called him ... the Gunsmith.
LONGARM by Tabor Evans
The popular long-running series about U.S. Deputy Marshal Long--his life, his loves, his fight for justice.
LONE STAR by Wesley Ellis
The blazing adventures of Jessica Starbuck and the martial arts master, Ki.
Over eight million copies in print.
SLOc.u.m by Jake Logan
Today's longest-running action western. John Sloc.u.m rides a deadly trail of hot blood and cold steel.
Chapter 1.
A man had to study on his drinking money when he didn't have a job. But while the Parthenon Saloon, near the place he used to work, asked an extra nickel for a needled beer, it also offered the best free lunch in town. So the former Deputy U.S. Marshal Custis Long was down at that end of the bar, nursing a needled beer while eating pickled pigs' feet and potato salad, when his recent boss, Marshal Billy Vail, caught up with him.
The older and shorter Vail bellied up to the bar, snapped a German-silver badge upon the polished mahogany between them, and demanded in an injured tone, ”What in blue blazes did I do or say, old son?”
Longarm, as he was better known away from the federal building he'd just stormed out of, coldly replied, ”At the risk of sounding like your fool echo, you told me you wanted me to sneak down the other side of the Colorado-New Mexico line and ride herd on a heap of storm clouds hoverin over La Mesa de los Viejos, which is ominously close to Jicarilla country.”
Billy Vail nodded his balding bullet head. ”I thought I said something to that effect just before you threw your badge in my face and lit out like a schoolmarm seven unwashed sheepherders were out to screw.”
Longarm washed down some potato salad with a carefully measured swallow of expensive beer and replied, ”The government signed with the Jicarilla in ink after making them move twice before, speaking of s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g.”
Vail seemed sincerely puzzled. ”What in thunder do those Mountain Apache have to do with the ch.o.r.e I was a.s.signing you when you went loco en la cabeza on me?”
Longarm sounded really disgusted as he replied. ”The Jicarilla have kept the peace since '73. They have more in common with their Navaho cousins than they have with Victorio's mixed band of bronco Mescalero and Chiricahua. Yet the Great White Father, in his infinite wisdom, wants me scouting the hornet's nest he just heaved a rock through. I swear, the War Department must have dozens of congressmen's kids who just made second lieutenant and want that pretty red-and-blue campaign ribbon, even though so many Quill Indians have sued for peace. I suppose you hadn't read about the BIA fixing to move the Jicarilla down to Tularosa Canyon, eh?”
Vail shrugged. ”Sure I read about it. I read everything. The powers that be feel the army will have a better handle on the really treacherous Mescalero Apache if they move 'em over to study war no more with their Chiricahua allies at San Carlos, under tighter rein from Fort Apache just next door.”
When he saw he was getting no argument from Longarm about that, he continued with a bemused frown. ”Moving the Mescalero out of Tularosa Canyon leaves an established BIA agency with n.o.body to agent for. So I reckon that's why they're fixing to move the far smaller Jicarilla nation south from that marginal mountain reserve and teach them real farming in-”
”Bulls.h.i.+t!” Longarm said, scowling like h.e.l.l. ”It's a pure and simple land grab! The Jicarilla gave us a h.e.l.l of a fight, surrendered under honorable terms, and were ceded barely more than a hundred square miles of mountain scenery n.o.body else had any use for at the time. But well-watered and half-timbered high country is still a far cry from the desert scrub the Mescalero keep running away from because there's no way even Na-dene could get by on hunting and food-gathering alone. That's what the folks we call Treacherous Apache call themselves, Na-dene.”
Vail snorted, ”Don't tell your granny how to suck eggs, or offer an ex-Texas Ranger lectures on Mister Lo, The Poor Indian. You won't get no argument from this child if you want to pine the U.S. Army has enough on its plate with Victorio and his bunch this summer. But you're wrong if you think I'd fib about Indians to any deputy who's been riding for me six or eight years. I don't know who told you the Mesa de los Viejos is within thirty miles of the Jicarilla agency at Dulce by crow, but-”
”Now who's teaching whose granny to suck eggs?” Longarm said with a thin smile. ”It ain't as if New Mexico Territory is stuck to the back of the moon. How many times have we been asked to help the new territorial government clean up after the Santa Fe Ring left over from poor old Grant and his political bandits?”